LSE Enterprise has concluded and published the final report of the Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment of the EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement. The final report gathers valuable information on a broad range of questions, capturing issues that are highly relevant to the ongoing negotiations. These include the economic impact of the agreement in light of other ongoing and concluded agreements the EU and Japan are involved in, in-depth analysis across key sectors, as well as assessment of social, human rights and environmental implications.

The team would like to thank all the stakeholders who contributed to this assessment through the series of roundtables, surveys and extensive feedback. The consultation process was a central part to conducting the TSIA and your interest and cooperation are much appreciated.

The final report and the executive summary were released on the 22nd April 2016. All documents can be downloaded below. All previous versions of the report and details about the TSIA will remain available during the process of the negotiations.​

​The latest round took place in Brussels between 29 February and 4 March 2016. The talks were led by Deputy Director General Mauro Petriccione, DG Trade, and by chief negotiator, Ambassador Koji Haneda (see images below).

The negotiations have been divided between the various Working Groups, focusing on:

Japan Times reports that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called for an ambitious free trade agreement between the European Union and Japan, saying before his first visit to the Asian country from Monday that he hopes the TPP agreement reached last month gives “fresh impetus” to the FTA negotiations between Japan and the European Union, and that Dutch “high-quality agricultural and dairy products like veal, milk and cheese will be made more accessible to Japanese consumers.”

“But the EU is not the U.S.,” Rutte warned. “I would like to see a highly comprehensive and ambitious trade deal and I hope it can be concluded as soon as possible,” he said. Tokyo and Brussels are hoping to strike a broad FTA deal by the end of this year.

After two years of talks, the E﻿urop﻿ean Union and Vietnam have reached an agreement in principle in the negotiations for a free trade agreement. According to European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, "Vietnam is a growing economy and once this agreement is up and running, it will provide significant new opportunities for companies on both sides, by increasing market access for goods and services. Over 31m jobs in Europe depend on exports, so having easier access to a growing and fast developing market like Vietnam, with its 90m consumers, is great news."

Today, the President of the European Council (Mr. Donald Tusk) and the President of the European Commission (Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker) met with Prime Minister of Japan, Mr Shinzo Abe, in Tokyo to hold their annual summit.

Among many other topics discussed to develop the strategic partnership between EU and Japan, the FTA was scrutinised in detail, allowing both sides to provide a mandate for their negotiators to conclude the deal by the end of 2015.

The full statement of all the events discussed today can be downloaded below:

Today marks the end of a week-long series of negotiations between the EU and Japan about the FTA. The tenth of its kind, expected topics such as competition, sustainable development and the future of the FTA were discussed.Much flexibility was shown from both sides, and it is hoped that this positivity will be continued in the EU-Japan summit to be held this May.

European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström delivered a speech last week at Maastricht University in the Netherlands in which she highlighted some of the key principles and goals of European trade policy. According to her, "(in) Europe today over 30 million jobs or almost 14% of the whole labour force are supported by our exports around the world. In the Netherlands that figure is 1.3 million jobs, more than 15% of the labour force". The Commissioner also highlighted some of the key successes of existing FTAs, noting that the four-year old agreement with South Korea has led to a 30% increase in overall exports and a 96% increase in car exports specifically, whereas exports to Mexico have tripled in the fifteen years since free trade was established in 2000.

The European Commission published at the end of March its Annual Report on the implementation of the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in 2009 and has been provisionally in force since 2011. According to the document, exports have increased by 35% since implementation, with exports of fully liberalised goods going up by 46%. The FTA is considered to be the EU's most ambitious one to date, and according to Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, "(the EU-South Korea FTA) confirms that European companies and consumers are very well placed to benefit from increased international trade."

In a speech at the Stockholm School of Economics on 13 March 2015, European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström addressed the trade relationship between the EU and Japan, focusing on the opportunities stemming from the FTA currently under negotiation. "(Negotiating) an ambitious and comprehensive agreement between the EU and Japan avoids the risk that we fall behind where we are today in each other's markets. (...) We hear a lot about TTIP in the press here in Europe, but it's worth noting that for some EU sectors a deal with Japan could be economically even more significant", the Commissioner said.To read Malmström's full speech, click here.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on 09 March 2015. Photograph: Reuters

On her first visit to Japan in seven years earlier this month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the opportunity to renew calls for the conclusion of the ongoing negotiations for a free trade agreement between the European Union and Japan, which both sides hope to have achieved by the end of 2015. "There are many commonalities, there are differences, but there are good reasons to intensify relations between Germany and Japan," Merkel said. The German Chancellor also called for the harmonisation of emissions standards, whose differences she claims create considerable bureaucracy. The ninth round of negotiations over the agreement took place between 22-27 February in Brussels, with the next round set to take place in Tokyo in late April. Read more

The 9th round of EU-Japan FTA talks took place from 23-27 February in Brussels. The round covered most of the areas to be included in the future agreement, namely tariffs, technical barriers to trade, access to public tenders, trade in services, rules on investment and sanitary and phytosanitary issues, regulatory cooperation, and transparency.The EU delegation was led by Mauro Petriccione, Deputy Director-General of DG Trade, and the Japanese delegation by Yasumasa Nagamine, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. The next round of negotiations is to take place in Tokyo at the end of April 2015.

Jennifer Freedman reports during the seventh round of the EU-Japan talks. She comments that EU and Japan moved closer to wrapping up a free trade agreement that could boost Europe’s economy by as much as 0.8 percent of gross domestic product and add 400,000 jobs. At the same time, she observes that the two sides remain divided over key issues such as automobiles and agriculture, leaving in doubt their ability to complete the talks next year, as planned. Read full comment here

Dods EU Monitoring reports that the INTA committee has debated the EU-Japan FTA on the 7 October. Pedro Silva Pereira (S&D, PT) has been the newly appointed rapporteur on the EU-Japan agreement. The INTA committee has heard Mauro Petriccione, EU Chief Negotiator for the EU/Japan FTA on a number of issues with particular attention to the automotive industry facing non-tariff barriers in Japan as well as public procurement and the Japanese railway sector. Read more

Patrick Messerlin takes a look at the French opposition to the EU-Japan negotiations with regard to public procurement and the exclusion of the railway sector. He discusses four key channels through which the French economy will benefit from the free trade agreement. Read more